A hotel, two restaurants, a coffee shop, a theatre, a music school, a bank, a reading room, the editing and printing offices of the Slovene daily newspaper Edinost, offices, studies and private apartments: for 16 years the Narodni Dom in Trieste hosted all these activities. Between August 1904 and July 1920 this multifunctional building in Piazza della Caserma held over 600 theatre performances, 134 concerts, 95 political events, 84 conferences. These figures are indicative of the lively life of Trieste and its Slovene community at the beginning of the 20th century.
The role of the Narodni Dom was to show the economic and cultural solidity of the Slovene community, but it was also a reference for Czechs, Croatians, Slovakians, Serbians and members of other communities living in the main port of the Habsburg Empire.